‘No Bears’ Review: A Film That Critiques Itself

Why make a film? Why watch one? As banal as these questions are, they’re additionally unsettling. The world is so flooded with photographs that making sense of what’s already there can really feel paralyzing; including one thing new can appear to be the very definition of absurdity. Sentimentality in regards to the energy of cinema — to boost consciousness, broaden empathy, confront the reality, change the world — mirrors a cynicism that insists on cinema’s triviality.

It’s solely a film! That’s as true of “No Bears” as of anything, however there could also be no dwelling filmmaker who has thought-about the sensible and philosophical implications of the artwork kind — the work of taking pictures and chopping; the pleasure and anxiousness of watching — as rigorously or as insightfully because the Iranian director Jafar Panahi.

He can’t be accused of taking motion pictures frivolously, or of taking himself too significantly. He has continued to follow his craft, rigorously and playfully, on the threat of his consolation, his freedom and probably his life. When in 2010 the Iranian authorities banned him from directing, he answered with “This Is Not a Movie,” a feature-length video diary shot partly on an iPhone and technically not “directed” in any respect.

Within the years since, he has continued in that vein of clandestine metacinema, taking part in himself (in “Closed Curtain” and “Taxi”) much less as a heroic auteur than as a curious, light, typically silly middle-aged household man who can’t break the behavior of turning life into movie (or, to be exact, digital video). His motion pictures are private and in addition political, as he goals his quizzical gaze on the petty hypocrisies and huge injustices of contemporary Iran, in addition to on the paradoxes of his personal artistic follow.

Not lengthy after “No Bears” was accomplished — it was filmed in secret earlier this yr — Panahi was sentenced in Iran to 6 years in jail. Within the months since, mass protests difficult the authority of the Islamic Republic have swept throughout the nation and have been answered with brutal repression.

The film doesn’t explicitly handle the unrest or every other public issues; Iranian filmmakers are inclined to cope with doubtlessly controversial points obliquely, strolling the road between realism and fable and trusting audiences to grasp the implications of their tales, delicate messages that censors may overlook. Panahi pioneered this strategy within the early 2000s — whereas additionally testing its limits — confronting misogyny and sophistication inequality in movies like “The Circle,” “Crimson Gold” and “Offside.” For the reason that ban, as his work has mirrored his personal predicament, he has discovered new methods to mix social criticism with self-criticism.

“No Bears” finds Panahi (once more taking part in himself) occupying rented rooms in a village close to the Turkish border, removed from his residence in Tehran. In a small metropolis in Turkey not removed from the village, a movie is being shot below his path — one apparently based mostly on the real-life story of two Iranian exiles, Zara (Mina Kavani) and Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei), who hope to seek out asylum in France. Panahi supervises the manufacturing on his laptop computer and his cellphone when he has a sign, which isn’t usually. His assistant director, Reza (Reza Heydari), tries to persuade Panahi to go to the set, maybe with the assistance of the smugglers and human traffickers who management the realm. However the border is a line the director gained’t cross.

Again within the village, he finds himself blended up in a sophisticated feud involving a younger couple (Amir Davari and Darya Alei) and a bitter romantic rival (Javad Siyahi). It’s the perception of events on each side {that a} image Panahi might or might not have taken can have some bearing on the case. The village chief (Naser Hashemi) will get concerned, as does Panahi’s host, an unctuous fellow named Ghanbar (Vahid Mobaseri).

In contrast with the tense drama surrounding Zara and Bakhtiar, what occurs to the filmmaker appears at first like comedian reduction — a fish-out-of-water caper a few big-city sophisticate snagged by rustic brambles. Everybody within the village is unstintingly, ostentatiously well mannered. Ghanbar by no means fails to deal with Panahi as “expensive sir,” and Panahi responds with fulsome gratitude, however mutual resentment simmers beneath their interactions, and the rituals of courtesy and deference that govern Panahi’s dealings with Ghanbar’s neighbors are heavy with distrust, hostility and even the potential for violence.

I gained’t give something away, besides to say that when tragedy arrives — in and behind the scenes of Zara and Bakhtiar’s story, and in each fold of the movie’s constructed actuality — it feels each surprising and grimly inevitable. It additionally appears to be, partially and inadvertently but additionally unmistakably, the filmmaker’s fault.

At one level, Panahi is summoned to the village “swear room,” the place he’s anticipated to testify about his suspicious {photograph}. It isn’t a authorized continuing — a sympathetic elder tells him it’s permissible to lie — however fairly certainly one of many native traditions established to maintain up appearances and rein in unruly conduct. Earlier than making his assertion, Panahi asks that the Quran get replaced by a video digicam, which he believes will endow his phrases with unimpeachable credibility.

However what if this present of religion — in visible proof, within the documentary report, within the ethical status of the shifting picture — is itself a type of superstition? That’s the uncomfortable query that “No Bears” faces, one which challenges not solely its personal assumptions but additionally the piety of an viewers desirous to embrace the movie as a gesture of resistance and to bless itself for recognizing the gesture. Panahi, whose braveness and honesty are past doubt, has made a film that calls these very qualities into query, a film about its personal moral limits and aesthetic contradictions.

Possibly artwork can’t save anybody, or change something. So why trouble with it? I’m tempted to say that “No Bears” solutions that query just by current, however to take action could be to understate Panahi’s accomplishment.

The title refers to an encounter he has on the best way to the swear room, a gathering with a stranger that looks as if one thing out of a folks story. The person cautions that there are harmful bears lurking within the darkness, and later dismisses his personal warning. “Our worry empowers others,” he says. “No Bears!”

That’s a superb slogan, and a crucial perception in a really scary world, but additionally, possibly, a consoling fiction. To insist that there aren’t any bears could be a well mannered approach of acknowledging that the bears are us.

No Bears
Not rated. Operating time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters.